Nolan Bushnell

Nolan Bushnell
Born	February 5, 1943 Clearfield, Utah
Occupation(s)	Electrical engineer and entrepreneur

Nolan K. Bushnell (born February 5, 1943 in Clearfield, Utah) is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain.

Bushnell has received a great deal of recognition, included being inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, receiving the Nations Restaurant News “Innovator of the Year” award, and being named one of Newsweek's "50 Men That Changed America". Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of the video game industry.

Early years and personal life

Bushnell graduated from the University of Utah electrical engineering program in 1968, and was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He was one of many computer science students of the 1960s who played the now-famous Spacewar! game on DEC mainframe computers.

After selling Atari to Warner Communications for US$28,000,000, Bushnell purchased the former mansion of coffee magnate James Folger in Woodside, California, which he shared with his wife Nancy and their many children. ("Not bad for an ex-Mormon," jokes Bushnell.) The estate overlooked, among other things, the house of former Bushnell employee and Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs. The Bushnells now live in southern California.

Wife Nancy Bushnell operated the Lion and Compass restaurant in Sunnyvale, California. Oldest child Alissa Bushnell (one of two children with his first wife, Paula), has worked for author and motivational speaker Anthony Robbins as well as running public relations for PeopleSoft while fending off Oracle and Larry Ellison. Alissa currently works with Nolan at uWink.

Entrepreneurship

Syzygy

In 1971, Bushnell and colleague Ted Dabney formed Syzygy Company and created the Spacewar clone Computer Space. The “counter slip” state machine technology which drove Computer Space was later patented and served as the core technology for all arcade video games until 1975 when microprocessors appeared on the scene and soon became the technology of choice. Computer Space was built into a self-contained cabinet manufactured and distributed by Nutting Associates.

Computer Space proved to be too far ahead of its time and was a commercial failure. Though Computer Space enjoyed over US$3,000,000 in sales Bushnell felt that the poor marketing of Nutting left significant sales on the table and decided that his next game would be licensed to a bigger manufacturer.

Atari

In 1972, Bushnell and Dabney incorporated their company, rented their first office on Scott Boulevard in Sunnyvale, CA and changed the name to Atari. They then contracted with Bally Manufacturing to create a driving game. To handle the additional work they hired their first employee Al Alcorn. By 1982, Atari had become a US$2 billion empire and "the fastest-growing company in the history of American business" (Cohen). Atari held this title until being surpassed by Apple Computer, which was started by former Atari employee Steve Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak.

Nolan had visited a showing of the Magnavox Odyssey and thought that fixing the game play of the Magnavox tennis game would be a simple training project, never thinking that it would be commercialized. The project turned out to create the Pong video game, Bushnell had it installed at a bar in Grass Valley, California and a tavern in Sunnyvale, California called Andy Capp's (which has since become the Rooster T. Feathers comedy club). Pong proved to be very popular (initially malfunctioning due to an overflowing coin box), but imitators helped keep Atari from dominating the fledgling coin-operated video game market at that time.

Bushnell later bought out Dabney. In 1974, Bushnell and Atari decided to develop a home version of Pong. Thanks to a marketing and distribution agreement with Sears, Pong sales soared when the unit was released in 1975.

In 1977, Atari introduced the Atari 2600 VCS (Video Computer System), which revolutionized the home video game market, and began a new era in video game consoles. Demand for the unit was so great that Atari executives manned the production lines to help with the assembly and packaging during that first Christmas after its release.

In 1976, Atari employee Steve Jobs offered to Bushnell a computer design that he and friend Steve Wozniak had created, but Atari was already in no financial position to act upon it; the same year, Warner Communications (now Time Warner) bought Atari, and Bushnell was forced out of the company in November of 1978 after a dispute with Warner over the future direction of the company, notably on their closed software strategy (later changed) for the home computer division.

In the late 1980s, Bushnell managed the development of two new games for the Atari 2600, most likely as part of a marketing attempt to revive sales of system, already more the decade old. (By that time, Atari had been split into two entities: the consumer-product company Atari Corp., run by Jack Tramiel and family, and coin-operated games maker Atari Games.)

Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theaters

While still at Atari in 1977, Bushnell had purchased Pizza Time Theaters back from Warner Communications (as Pizza Time was created by Bushnell and was originally developed as distribution channel for Atari Games while Bushnell was at Atari), a place where kids could go and eat pizza and play video games. The Pizza Time / Chuck E. Cheese's Theaters also had animatronic animals that played music as entertainment (Bushnell had always wanted to work for Walt Disney, but was continually turned down for employment when he was first starting out after graduation - Chuck E. Cheese's was his homage to Disney and the technology developed there). In 1981 Bushnell turned day-to-day food operations of Chuck E Cheese’s to a newly hired restaurant executive and focused on Catalyst Technologies.

Through 1982 and 1983 Nolan had been concentrating on his Chuck E. Cheese's subsidiaries and side projects (Catalyst Technologies). Much to the criticism of some, he had been funding these by taking money out of Chuck E. Cheese (such as with video game company Sente, which was made a subsidiary) or taking out massive loans based on Chuck E. Cheese stock. To make matters worse, Chuck E. Cheese’s had started to lose money in 1982 and was now in the red. Oblivious, he continued to spend money on his projects and spend more and more time yachting. By the time Bushnell's spending and lack of involvement caught up with him , it was to late and Chuck E. Cheese was facing bankruptcy. President and long time friend Joe Keenan resigned that fall. Nolan tried to step back in, blaming the money problems on over expansion and saturation in local markets by the management team. He resigned in February of 1984, when his attempt was rebuffed by the Board of Directors. Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theaters (now named after its famous mouse mascot) entered bankruptcy in the fall of 1984. ShowBiz Pizza, a competing Pizza/Arcade family resteraunt then purchased Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theaters and assumed their debt. The newly formed company, ShowBiz Pizza Time, operated resteraunts under both brands for a period of time before unifying all locations under the Chuck E. Cheese's brand. Today over 480 locations of this resteraunt are in business, and it remains highly successful.

Other businesses and ventures

Bushnell founded the Catalyst Technologies Venture Capital Group, one of the first incubators. The Catalyst Group companies included Androbot, Etak, Cumma, Axlon and many more. Axlon launched many consumer and consumer electronic products successfully, most notably AG Bear, a bear that mumbled/echoed a child's words back to him/her. Axlon was largely sold to Hasbro. Etak was the first company to digitize the maps of the world, ultimately providing the back bone for google maps, mapquest.com, and other navigation systems. Etak was sold to Rupert Murdoch in the 1980s.

In 1984, Bushnell once again entered the video game business, when he founded Sente Games. (Sente is the Japanese term for the initiative or control in Go, Bushnell's favorite game). Bally/Midway agreed to be Sente's distributor; the list of published Sente titles includes the popular one-on-one hockey game, Hat Trick (1984). In 1988 and 1989, Bushnell operated Bots, Inc., which developed a system of autonomous pizza delivery robots for Little Caesar's Pizza.

Bushnell's most recent company is uWink, which has gone through several failed iterations including a touch screen kiosk designer and an online Entertainment Systems network. The latest version (announced in 2005) is a new interactive entertainment restaurant called the uWink Media Bistro, whose concept builds off his Chuck E. Cheese venture. Guests may order food and drinks via screens at each table, through which guests may also enjoy games, movie trailers and short videos. (Bushnell had pioneered this concept through Bots nearly 20 years earlier.) The first Bistro has been scheduled to open in Woodland Hills, California since Summer of 2006.

In 1991, Bushnell endorsed the Commodore International CDTV. In 2005, he served as a judge on the USA Network reality series Made In the USA.

References

• Zap: the Rise and Fall of Atari, by Scott Coen (1984) ISBN 0-7388-6883-3
• Gaming 101: A Contemporary History of PC and Video Games, by George Jones (2005) ISBN 1-55622-080-4
• The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon--The story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World, by Steven L. Kent (2001) ISBN 0-7615-3643-4
• High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, by Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson (2003) ISBN 0-07-223172-6

External links

• A Video Interview With Nolan Bushnell as shown on Gamer TV
• The Dot Eaters entry on Bushnell and Atari
• An interview with Bushnell
• Discovery Channel Interview with Bushnell.
• uWink